Orange Is The New Black And Law & Order Have Quite A Few Faces In Common

Have you ever been in the middle of a TV show and caught sight of an actor or actress and wondered where you’d seen them before? Who hasn’t, right? Well if that happened to you while you were watching Netflix’s original series Orange is the New Black, chances are very high that every person you wondered about was involved with some iteration of Law & Order at one point in his or her career. Seriously, like almost all of them.

A round of applause is in order for Autostraddle writer/editor Stef, who amazingly compiled a list of what is presumably every single Orange is the New Black star's appearance within the Law & Order universe. Now, that isn’t to say that the exhaustive number of OITNB cast members were on the long-running procedural, but the count is presently up to 33. (And here I’ve always thought that Friends was the obvious hub of cameos.) Now, we could spend all day going over each of these appearances, but that would take…all day, and it wouldn't be very fair. So let's just go over some of the facts, shall we?

Interestingly enough, there are quite a few role reversals going on, with a few of OITNB's "good guys" stepped over to the wrong side of the law in their Law & Order appearances. The biggest example here is Pablo Schreiber, whose own disgraced Pornstache is hardly a beacon of virtues. But at least he wasn't a serial rapist and murderer, like Schreiber's multi-episode character William Lewis was. And you know the warden's assistant Joe Caputo, played by Nick Sandow? He portrayed a car thief in one of his three appearances. Even the schlubby correctional officer O'Neill (Joel Garland) wasn't above the law, getting busted for dogfighting.

On the flip side, some of our favorite female convicts took on much more lawful paths through life in the worlds of Law & Order. Vicky Jeudy, who played Janae Watson, and Selenis Leyva, better known as Gloria on the show, both played cops, with Leyva taking on an extended run as a detective. Michell Hurst (Miss Claudette) was both a social worker and a public defender, while Kate "Red" McGrew played Assistant U.S. Attrorney Donna Geysen.

And the list goes on and on. Be sure and head over to Autostraddle to see and read about everyone else. Don’t worry, animals, you’ve got time! And then you can finish watching (or rewatching) all of Orange is the New Black’s Season 2, either legally or not.